Life in Mono
by drosier
Summary: Of course you look at her. Everyone looks, and they all see her the same way. Then one day you realize you've been looking at her all wrong and that people are more than they seem. Sonny/Portlyn - femmeslash
1. Prologue: Dreamboat

**Notes: **I started off writing a Sonny/Tawni fic, but I kind of got sidetracked. You know, in a way that means I started a whole different story featuring another pairing. The actual chapters for this fic will be much longer than this (and probably a lot less suggestive xD). And if you haven't guessed, this is **femmeslash.**

Also, I was going to give this ship a name, but once I figured out it actually had the potential to be something like "Pony," "Portly," "Porny," and "Syn," I just stopped thinking about it altogether. O_o

**Disclaimer: **I don't own this show or these characters.

* * *

**Prologue:**

** Dreamboat **

Portlyn is bent over the sink so her tie touches the faucet; she's painting her lips exotic with a worn-down tube of lipstick, and Sonny can't help but notice.

Of course, that's not really anything weird since _everyone_ notices Portlyn.

Sonny doesn't know if she's necessarily noticing the same things—the green eyes and twirls of dark-honey hair spiraling around skin like the inside of a ripe peach—but considering the first thing Sonny said to Portlyn was that she had nice legs, Sonny thinks she sees Portlyn just like everyone else does.

Right now Sonny watches the way Portlyn delicately smudges the lipstick at the corner of her mouth with the very tip of her index finger; the way she simultaneously pulls a feathery tissue from her clutch before pursing her lips around it so the red from her mouth smears off and looks like a pressed flower between the pages of a book.

She's hypnotizing in the same way the delicate things people like to keep on display are: those bright paintings of jewel-colored flowers; the pearly, blown-crystal globes; and ceramic figurines with painted lips, long legs, and pointed toes.

It somehow makes Sonny want to watch Portlyn a lot more, even when she happens to be doing uninteresting things like dabbing the excess makeup from her face.

Suddenly Sonny's feet feel uncomfortably wet, and she jumps back and looks down to realize the sink water is sloshing over the edge, throwing the moment back in her face like a broken water balloon. She bursts back into the bright-bathroom reality, realizing there are suds from the soapy water sopping through her sleeves.

Hands scrambling over the mess to shut off the faucet, she immediately begins to feel like an idiot--choosing the sink she _knew_ was clogged and then actually getting distracted long enough for the dirty water to crawl over the brim and onto the ratty shoes she brought from home and the too-expensive shirt she bought in LA.

Portlyn is staring when she looks back up.

"You're wet," Portlyn murmurs, and the way she says it, it's like she means something entirely different by it. She looks wickedly amused. The water is dripping loudly in Sonny's ears, the sound throwing itself against the tiled walls like kamikaze drumbeat. Portlyn leans forward, smirking, and Sonny almost feels like Portlyn turned her into a pile of cement with the slant of her lips. "Here." She grins and flicks her tissue at Sonny, and it lands teepee'ed over the mint-green tiles like a perching dove, blood running all down its pale back.

As Portlyn practically wafts from the bathroom, her skirt swishing like hair and her heels _click clicking_ like a pulse, Sonny realizes that it was watching the girl-dictated social sadism on _Mackenzie Falls_ that Sonny first learned that some girls are petty and cruel.

It's right outside the set of the same show where she learns that girls are also erotic.

Sonny had always known that some people she met in life would be nightmares. What she hadn't realized was that there were others who were wet dreams.


	2. Bloodbeat

I'm really pleased that people are interested in this pairing! I appreciate all your comments. I'm kind of annoyed with this chapter, though. Nothing really turned out the way I hoped it would.

After this chapter, I'm going to try to write shorter ones (by putting less sections in each chapter), because I find I get overwhelmed when it comes to editing longer chapters and put off doing it forever, especially when I'm worrying over whether or not people will like anything I write. (Yeah, that's what's been happening with my other fics..) Last Wednesday I actually wrote a pretty detailed outline of Life in Mono and came up with nine chapters, but that was when I was planning on writing these sort-of enormous ones. (Enormous for fanfic anyway.) I'm not sure how much the chapter count will actually increase after this, but it probably shouldn't more than double. I hope that doesn't freak anyone out.

So hopefully shortening the chapters will help me post better-quality chapters that will be up sooner. I'm going to try my best to get this updated at least once every week or two, especially since I have more of an emotional attachment to this fic than to my others right now for some reason. (It might be because I want to marry Demi Lovato. xD Okay, sorry. Totally trufax though.) Keep your fingers crossed that the time I spend hating school doesn't interfere with The Plan too much! Yeah, now that everyone knows my life story...

**A Note on the Actual Chapter: **If anyone has seen The L Word, you would probably know Lez Girls as Jenny's movie, but I used the title here as sort of a The L Word type show that will exist within this universe. So obviously, I don't own that. Or, as you know, the actual characters or setting in this fic.

* * *

chapter one:  
bloodbeat

There's something in the way she moves now - something that makes Sonny think Portlyn's caught on to how many offhand glances she happens to throw her way.

When Portlyn bends over the table across the cafeteria to reach for the sugar bowl, she does it like it's a sport. Sonny's eyes automatically slip down the slope of Portlyn's shirt before she catches herself and lets them dart away, focusing instead on Portlyn's hands. Dainty wrists and slim fingers adorned with pink pearls. Reaching. Sonny feels a stare like a touch, and it doesn't take any thought to know where it's coming from.

Portlyn's eyes are very blue in this light, predatory as a cat's.

"You're _staring_ over at those pouty-faced drama freaks again," Tawni says in Sonny's ear.

"_Pfft_." Sonny laughs and lets her eyes quickly dart away from the packed table across the cafeteria where the cast of _Mackenzie Falls_ sits nobly, roped off in velvety blue. "Me _staring_? No way. You've got the wrong set of eyes." Sonny makes a wide V with two fingers and points to her own pupils, next thrusting her fingers down toward her slop-filled plate for emphasis. "These eyes're right here on my plate!"

Tawni's eyes are peering at Sonny's left hand accusingly, and the 'hmm' that rises from the back of her throat sounds like it'd be better suited as a yawn. When Sonny looks down, she realizes that in a hollow pursuit to look normal she had ended up absently buttering her own thumb.

The blood rushes to Sonny's ears like water from an open faucet. So maybe she stares a little. Sonny won't deny that, not to herself anyway, but as much as she likes Tawni, it's not like Sonny wants her to _know_.

Sonny nonchalantly ruffles her own hair, the result being butter-based highlights, and Sonny attempts to reach through the kaleidoscope montage of long legs and red lips that currently occupies her mind to come up with an explanation for the butter in her hair in relation to a sketch. Tawni bares her teeth between glossed, grinning lips. Sonny hates how she has this _way_ of laughing in her face without making a sound.

"_Wow_," Tawni says jauntily. "It's almost endearing how you never get tired of this game. But okay! I'll play. Just one word of advice?" She flicks her braceleted wrist toward Sonny's thumb, which Sonny rubs anxiously. "You might wanna try that with toast instead, unless you enjoy pain with your breakfast. I know the food here is bad, but you don't have to go that far."

Sonny has random tufts of her hair pinched between her fingers and is rambling a contrived testimony about the miracles of conditioning with butter when Tawni's neon purple nails click against the plastic tray before she rises like a queen to toss the nutritionally-defunct sludge Brenda calls food into the trash bin. The damage is done; the incident is locked into Tawni's memory like gold. Tawni might think them something like friends now, but Tawni is still Tawni.

"See you on the set!" Tawni says jovially as she flounces away.

Sonny drops her cheek into her palm and sighs, her eyelids slipping downward. For the first time since the week she arrived in L.A., Sonny itches to run home and curl up on the couch with her mom, a movie, and a brimful carton of greasy Chinese take-out.

The cafeteria is loud, and Sonny opens her eyes to invite in the other senses. Through fanned-out fingers adorning her face like a mask, she sees a pair of daintily-crossed legs.

Sonny knows her cast members would likely laugh in her face if they knew she was pining over the bombshell two tables over, especially since Portlyn belonged to The Falls. She can imagine the scene if she delves too deeply into her own humility: Grady and Nico gripping each other for support, Tawni hunched and pointing as Zora clenches her own stomach, her face the most twisted and expressive. It's the worst, though, that they'd probably even declare Sonny insane if she told them that sometimes when Sonny catches herself staring, Portlyn is looking right back.

That scene is usually so flat-out outrageous that the first time it happened - sometime after she ran into Portlyn in the girlsroom - it stuck Sonny dumb. The second time, and still to now, she just thinks Portlyn can't even be real, like she's a long-legged hallucination of a starving man, because no matter what you look like, nobody actually _exists_ the way Portlyn does, not in real life.

Because when Portlyn's eyes touch you, it's not innocent longing or admiration. It's a stare like foreplay, and it's so intense that when Sonny thinks of Portlyn simply allowing her glances to slide away like water off of oiled feathers and casting Sonny off to be just another pair of pawing eyes among a million others - she thinks she might die, is all.

The world is upside-down, and all she sees is blue. Portlyn breaks their gaze and goes back to her plate so normally that Sonny feels her hopes crumble to dust. Every time.

She can withhold it from her friends, but there is no way to deny it to herself.

Portlyn's teasing her.

*

The sudden, cheery heat of L.A. in the springtime causes Nico and Grady's infamous immaturity to swell into something dangerous. They delightedly call their condition Prank Fever, "to focus on another type of heat," Grady had said as he tip-toed away with a suspicious-looking package cradled against his chest and Nico's hand flat against his back.

All along the halls is a wry expression of the cast and crew's concern represented by endless rows of locked doors lining stage three. Sonny, on the other hand, had a cozy spot on the other side of the spectrum, confident that Nico and Grady simply wouldn't dare prank her, a cast-mate. That is, until Grady and Nico leave Tawni and Sonny's dressing room a pink-and-green disaster.

After two hours of scraping ooze off of Tawni's vanity and plucking feathers from Zora's favorite vent, Sonny ends up in the parking lot clutching a gunk-filled garbage bag, the sun beating glass-shard heat into the back of Sonny's exposed neck. Sonny raises a hand to shield her squinting eyes from the sun and strides toward the giant dumpster directly outside the set of _Mackenzie Falls_. It's painted over in stunning blues to depict a frozen lake, as if even their garbage has to put on a show to mask what it is.

When Sonny nears, she drops her hand from her face and sees Portlyn, who Sonny had been blotting out with her palm and splayed fingers. She's tightroping the wall behind the dumpster, weaving herself into the sun more seamlessly than the sky is able to, and Sonny halts in her place, wondering if she should make a fast retreat back to stage three.

She doesn't. Sonny's not that kind of girl, never has been, and hiding didn't get her a spot on her favorite sketch comedy show.

"What're you doing up there?" Sonny yells.

Maybe assuming Portlyn had already been aware of her presence was being too presumptuous regarding Portlyn's Sonny-awareness skills, Sonny thinks, once Portlyn teeters like a windblown cherry tree and almost loses her footing. Her arms windmill out at her sides, and Sonny runs forward even though she doesn't think she'd make it in time to catch her, but Portlyn has already regained her balance like she was born to do it and barely flinches.

"Haven't you heard? Anymore screw-ups and I'll be off _Mackenzie Falls_ and in there with the trash," Portlyn yells back nastily, every bit of drama her show is famous for. "I won't even be able to join the cast of _your_ loser show."

Sonny's insides stings like a slap, and Sonny knows she shouldn't be tuned into those pangs of hurt; she could have been anybody, because Portlyn doesn't care who she's lashing out at right now. In a way, it's like dealing with Tawni. She's hurt, and she just needs to spit words like poison darts in this way that's like how fish need the water. Sonny still parts her lips to reassure her that her acting isn't that bad, only she just flounders like a deboned fish, because Portlyn's stare chills her like ice.

Her hair whips around her face as her eyes search for something in Sonny. _Reaching._ Sonny's feels herself blushing, is almost too fevered to think, but for a moment, she might see something _real_ flicker in Portlyn.

It's gone when Sonny lets out a breath, wiped blank like a dream on waking. Still, there's something in the set of Portlyn's mouth, something that screams how much she wants Sonny to - to _something, _but Sonny can't figure out what that is for the life of her.

Portlyn's poker face is back on the next instant, and Sonny knows it's not worth throwing the standard retort that slides between the shows like a rusted boomerang, so Sonny walks back across the uneven pavement to the heavy doors of the stage three entrance and goes inside, completely forgetting about the trash.

*

The next day she finds Portlyn smoking out in the same dirty parking lot in broad daylight. She's sitting along a low wall, folded into herself like a flower shutting itself to the night and wearing an uncharacteristic black t-shirt that hangs off her skinny shoulders and makes Sonny think she'd even looks good in rags.

Trying to keep her face angled in a direction that doesn't suggest she's looking, Sonny walks purposefully toward the dumpster and hefts the bag of trash Tawni and Zora commanded her to take out over the wall. The bag clangs loudly against the metal.

"I'm from Michigan," Portlyn says abruptly.

Sonny stops cold. There's a chipped section on the dumpster wall that sticks out like a jagged nail: Sonny feels just like that unpainted spot. After a deep breath, she turns to face Portlyn who is flicking ash the color of her eyes onto stone that matches the set of her mouth. Portlyn blows smoke out from her lungs and squints up against the sun.

Sonny looks around suspiciously before deciding this isn't some _Mackenzie Falls_ trickery and then slowly steps out toward where Portlyn is slumped over, one foot moving out in front of her and then dragging the other to join it, the sole of her shoe grinding against the pavement. Her palms sweat, and her heart is drumming out something dangerous, and Sonny starts thinking it would be okay to crash and burn if she can just see where this leads.

"Uh," Sonny says, wiping sweat all down her jeans. "Yeah?"

Portlyn's glossed lips curl at the edge, and Sonny's heart makes an electric jolt thinking that it might be something like a smile. Something like it. The cigarette goes right back between her lips, and it's gone, leaving Sonny with a burnt-out spot in the center of her belly.

"Yeah."

"I always thought you were from here. Ya know, because you're so...high-maintenance." Sonny laughs goofily and makes a little swooping slope with her right hand before stiffly shutting her mouth and thrusting the hand in her pocket like it's being punished.

"You can be high-maintenance anywhere," Portlyn grins wryly. "You just can't be a TV star."

That _smile_ again.

Portlyn takes another drag, and Sonny considers telling her it'll blacken her pretty lungs before opting for something funny, something witty that'll make Portlyn's lips curve into a crescent-moon smile so she'll have to_ beg_ Sonny for more to keep it shining, but the metal doors to the studio crash open around the corner, and Portlyn quickly kills the flame against the side of the dumpster.

Sonny peers around the corner and sees Chad Dylan Cooper, framed statuesque against the darkness of the indoors. Sonny rolls her eyes.

She's surprised when she turns back to see Portlyn shoving a stick of gum into her mouth and engulfing herself in a heavy fog of perfume.

"Shit," she hisses, fanning the air around her. "What do I smell like?"

She moves, her sudden closeness making Sonny feel a bit dizzy, and Sonny might be a hugger, but Portlyn's nose inches from her blushing cheek is just too into Sonny's personal space. Her arm brushes Sonny's elbow like something electric, melting her from the inside out.

"Uh—spearmint field outside a perfume factory?" Sonny gives as a breathy chuckle in answer.

"Sure?" Portlyn asks, moving closer and puckering her lips to breathe over Sonny's cheek. Her breath is like snow, and her arm is pressing third-degree burns into Sonny's shoulder.

Sonny nods fervently, so much she strikes Portlyn in the eye with a flyaway strand of hair.

Portlyn flinches back a bit and brings her ringed fingers to shield her eye, her eyebrows raised and her lip curled, but there's a reason she can't be as stupid as people say, because she seems to catch onto the source of Sonny's discomfort quickly. And then smiles slyly, slipping back into the role of a temptress like it's a new glove.

That unspoken teasing thing is between them now, spiraling in a way that's so out of control it makes Sonny's head spin. Or maybe that's Portlyn's perfume dissolving the blood in her veins. Either way, Portlyn is remarkably still on her high-heels while Sonny feels she might tumble over.

Chad Dylan Cooper actually saves her in the end. He calls out to Portlyn like she's a toy poodle that got out into the street, and Portlyn pushes past Sonny in a hurry.

When she's gone, Sonny glances over at where she carelessly tossed the limp cigarette. There is no lipstick at the edges to indicate where her lips were pressed, but in a strange impulse, Sonny takes it between her fingertips. There's almost something poetic about a discarded cigarette butt, the way it holds onto the last dirty air Portlyn drew into her throat like a gasp.

*

Sonny is on the bright pink sofa in her dressing room brushing a line of black polish onto her big toe when Tawni breezes into the room, waving something flimsy around in her right hand.

"Wait'll you see this!" She angrily bunches shoulders like a surly cat and takes a moment to glare at the cover of a magazine before tossing it so it lands like an ungainly bird next to Sonny's bended knee. Sonny expects an article criticizing Tawni's shiny wardrobe until she sees a printed version of Portlyn glancing up at her and accidentally brushes polish onto her cuticles.

It turns out the magazine is one of the gossipy tabloids that lines the checkout lane of every supermarket – whether you're in Wisconsin or California - and the headline makes Sonny realizes that when Portlyn said the show wouldn't brook anymore of her screw-ups, she wasn't making a self-deprecating remark about the quality of her acting. Sonny quickly shoves the black polish off to the side.

The glossy front cover of the slim magazine reads a lot of things, but loudest of all, it reads "_Mackenzie Falls_' Portlyn Ross Takes Fall for Cast Member of The Lesbian Drama _Lez Girls_: find about about their on-set affair here."

Sonny thinks she might explode.

"Nobody would even _care_ about these little on-set excursions if it wasn't for that undeserved movie deal she got," Tawni pouts, completely unbothered by the way Sonny can feel her jaw hanging loose as a swinging trapdoor. "When does my life get invasively plastered all over newsstands for the world to see?"

Tawni pouts like it would be a huge honor for her privacy to be invaded. She's wrapped her robe now, filing her nails angrily, most likely imagining tiny versions of Portlyn's head packed onto each of her fingertips like olives, but all Sonny really knows right now is that there might be a lump made of lead lodged in her throat.

"But - Portlyn's...?"

"Who cares what she is besides a moviedeal-stealing upstart," Tawni snarls dramatically. "She's taking up magazine space that could be used for my pretty!"

But Sonny does care. She stares down at the headlines, and Tawni must read her like she reads these trashy magazines, because she gasps. This is probably what she was hoping for when she walked in the door.

"Oh god. You're not going to freak, are you?"

"Huh?"

"Let me explain how love works outside of the cheese factories," Tawni grins as she sits very close to Sonny, giving a martyred sigh and turning to her smugly. "I'm sure your mommy told you about how the stork comes when a mommy and daddy loves each other very much." Sonny's head is still spinning like an out-of-control top, and she nods dazedly. "But here in the real world, sometimes a mommy can love a mommy, or a daddy -"

"Oh my god, you are _not_ giving me The Talk!" Sonny yells, breaking back into reality through the sheer horror of it all. "I know! God, I – I have _friends_, I've watched _Lez Girls_ before! I -" She clamps her mouth shut there, before she gives herself away to Tawni. She doesn't know why she doesn't want her to know just yet, but then again, it might have something to do with Portlyn glancing sullenly up from the magazine. Sonny pointedly doesn't look at either of them. "It's just - Portlyn seemed so - "

Portlyn seemed so much less daunting when she was on a high shelf Sonny knew she could never reach for, because, forget not being tall enough, Sonny wasn't even in the same room.

"Puh-lease, sweetie!" Tawni bounces up like a spring, flipping her hair over her shoulders with both hands. She drops her voice a pitch, speaking seriously in a rare instant. "You can't tell anything about _anybody_ just by looking at them." She stops and considers. "Well. Except that they're pretty. Like me!" With that, she grins beatifically and flounces over to her vanity.

Sonny goes through the rest of the day as if it's happening underwater and she forgot her snorkel, and when rehearsals are over, she takes the tabloid magazine home and places it in a small spot under her bed. When she goes to sleep, she feels it there like the heroine did in _The Princess and the Pea_, dreaming some absurd dream about her and Portlyn working in a cheese factory as characters on _Lez Girls_, watching storks graze in the distances through the sooty windows.

*

Sonny thinks there is a very simple equation concerning numerous times she unnecessarily ends up at that dumpster outside stage two: once is an accident; twice is a coincidence - but three times? - Sonny's just praying to find something there then. Sonny's bad enough at math to wonder if that's really an equation at all, but anything is better than contemplating why seeking out Portlyn doesn't actually take any hard deliberation on her part. It's nothing more than a nerve-and-bone, flesh-and-blood reaction at this point, which means Sonny probably shouldn't feel that disappointment coiling in her belly when she doesn't find Portlyn there.

She does feel it.

Walking over to the low wall tucked behind the dumpster where Portlyn usually smokes reveals only a tiny, burt-out circle of cigarette ash that won't withstand the next rain. Around it are two diamond eyes and heart-shaped lips drawn in felt pen, making up a pouting face.

"Looking for me?"

"Uh - " Sonny whirls around fast on her clunky cowboy-boot heels. She throws a hand behind her head and then sticks it straight out in the air like her arm means to be flicking out a wave. She mostly just ends up ruffling her own hair. "Hey! And...no. Why?"

Portlyn's hands are tucked behind her back, and she glides over to Sonny, peering at her smugly. In fact, there's no way she can possibly look any more smug.

"You were looking at my art," Portlyn states surely. The bracelets circling her wrists jangle in agreement when she points.

Sonny just laughs. "Art?"

Portlyn nods severely, walking closer.

Sonny's never actually been kissed, but she watches a lot of _Lez Girls_. This is the type of heated part where the internally-closeted main character gets pushed up against a wall to get a face full of the bad girl. The thought alone makes her heart pump like a heaving locomotive. With Portlyn coming closer, Sonny thinks – louder than she has thought before – of what it could be like.

Then Portlyn walks past Sonny and plops herself down onto the low wall.

_Oh._

"So," Sonny says, fanning herself. "I'm from Wisconsin. West of Michigan - or, you know, south, depending on what part you're in." After the tangled statement flees her lips, Sonny thinks of how much more relevant it had sounded when Portlyn had said it.

"I know." Portlyn takes out a crinkling pack of cigarettes with a puckered pair of red lips on it and flips open the flap before resting her elbows in her lap. "It's one of Chad's favorite jokes."

"Oh." Sonny watches the way she puts a cigarette between her lips; she should probably find smoking less attractive. "Are you—are you gonna, you know..." With that Sonny makes a gesture with her hand, two fingers made into a V pressed to her lips as she sucks in a large, hissing breath and then laughs. "My Nana _always_ used always tell me never to start smoking like she did, because it leaves stains all over your teeth. But she told me _like this._" The 'like this' was formed in her throat like the words were choking her as they bubbled toward the tip of her tongue for lift-off.

Portlyn just rolls her eyes and thumbs an orange flame from a silver lighter.

Maybe crash and burn wasn't so far off.

"So you're gonna be all _Hollywood_ today, miss former Michigan?" Sonny tries.

Chin resting in her palm, Portlyn puffs a lissome stream of smoke from her lips.

"Well!" Sonny coughs, fanning her face with her hand. "_Moody_! Or well, I would be _moo_-dy, because, you know. Wisconsin and the cheese thing. Hey! That'd be a great sketch for the show. The _Moooo_dy Blues," Sonny laughs. "You know, like the rock band, but better, because they'll all be cows."

She is about to start singing _I'll Go Grazing_, but the way Portlyn is squinting at Sonny isn't exactly filling her with encouragement. Her eyes are shadowed with scrutiny, or just bewilderment, and just after Sonny becomes sure she might explode from the suspense, Portlyn speaks.

"I don't watch your show."

I. Don't. Watch. Your. Show. It's liking expecting daisies and coming up against barbed wire.

Seagulls overhead belt out scraggly lampoons passing for birdsong, and all Sonny musters at this point is a low hum of annoyance; she crosses her arms and shifts her muscles in irritation. Maybe it was just really stupid of her to think she would have more in common with Portlyn on the basis of them being from neighboring states when it was hard enough finding anything in common with her stuffy, doily-collecting neighbors back in Wisconsin. There's no telltale in her mind of what exactly she was expecting, and instead of internally reaching for one, Sonny straightens her back and sighs.

"I'm just gonna..." she says, gesturing over her shoulder and in the direction of stage three. Without any more ado, Sonny turns to go back to her set, where they at least understand her jokes.

Sonny thinks she's going to get away from the humiliation clean, and she's striding past the dumpster when, without any prelude, Portlyn yells after her.

"You wanna get out of here?"


	3. Superego

**Notes:** This is only the first half of this chapter. The next half should be up by Monday.

* * *

chapter 2:

superego

"You just expect me to drop everything and run off with you after you sit there blowing poison in my face and - and _insulting me_? I'm supposed to be rehearsing right now!"

Sonny knows she's gesticulating wildly, and she knows she might be slightly overreacting; she feels like a low fire has been enkindled at the pit of her stomach. When she whirls around to face Portlyn, Sonny feels it rise into her throat.

"But you're not," Portlyn points out calmly and gets this indulgent-yet-exasperated look that Sonny thinks might mean she's holding herself back from rolling her eyes. Instead she throws her cigarette to the ground and squashes it under her pointy shoe. "And I didn't _insult_ you. I asked you a question. _Nicely._"

Sonny wonders if Portlyn picked up her execution of nicety from watching her own creatively-cruel television drama.

"You know what?" Sonny asks, piqued and suddenly thinking that, just maybe, whoever wrote the _So Random_ cavorting regulations might have been onto something, because so far, associating with the cast of The Falls just seems to mess with her head. "Stop trying to sound all...all _misunderstood_."

When Sonny says it, she means it as a lame picked-from-the-surface, throw-away comment, because that fire's reached her brain and is lapping at the underside of her cerebellum, and she's allowed to have muted off-days when there's a pretty girl staring her down with enough intensity to singe something. Portlyn, though, obviously seems to think differently.

She's on her feet the next instant, looking completely calm and swiping dust from her skirt, but she's pushing her bracelets away from her knuckles like she's going to punch someone and there's this unguarded look on her face that tells Sonny she struck a nerve beneath that made-up surface.

"It's not like you would know, would you?" Portlyn sneers it as she crosses her arms over her chest. She's cold and almost taunting, shifting her hips to show her agitation and then veering into the _Mackenzie Falls_ persona that got her standing here in the first place. "So. Last chance."

"I told you," Sonny says. Slowly and with more caution. She crosses her arms low over her flip-flopping belly in confusion. "I can't. You're not the only one who does a show here."

There's nothing then, no reaction from Portlyn, just a slow-blowing wind that can't make either of them move and the sour feeling at the pit of Sonny's stomach. Portlyn may keep her lips sealed, but she doesn't take her eyes away from Sonny, and that says enough for now. Sonny starts to turn away.

"When I was eleven," Portlyn starts very suddenly. "I stuck my tongue to a frozen pole outside my house on a dare. It got stuck, and so my friend ran inside to get some warm water, only she made it too hot. I ended up chipping my front teeth." When Portlyn breaks off the sentence, Sonny thinks her mouth is curving into a grin, only it's entirely too wooden. She then runs her tongue along her two front teeth to further discredit the thought. "Bet you couldn't tell."

Sonny's struck dumb as a rock; she has absolutely no clue why Portlyn's telling her this. But then again, maybe that's not true. She can't imagine Portlyn as the kid who acted on stupid dares, even though Portlyn seems to be talking more about her dental work than any unexpected quirks in her personality.

"I'm seeing this band play later," Portlyn calls again like a question. She sounds a bit annoyed with Sonny's silence, but this time Sonny's answer is ready before Portlyn asks – _god, Sonny hopes she asks_ – buoyed down only by the soft weight of her own tongue. "Everyone will be there."

"Why do you care?" That wasn't the right answer at all, and Sonny surprises herself by saying it.

"Because they're _everyone_," Portlyn replies, and Sonny realizes they're on completely different wavelengths.

"No," Sonny says. "I mean. Whether or not I go. It's not exactly like we know each other."

Portlyn looks at her long and hard, flexing her fingers at her sides, before Sonny gets an answer.

"Maybe because you're a comedian," she shrugs. "And I've been bored all my life."

Then again, it isn't much of an answer. Or a response Sonny expected at all.

"You guys're supposed to make people laugh, right?" Portlyn continues and flicks her eyes over Sonny once and then twice like she means to say something else, or just say something by doing it.

Sonny gives a short nod, her mouth dry as the desert, her head a baffled mess.

"So," Portlyn says. She crosses her arms. "Maybe I need a laugh."

Then, like the whole thing is some wonderful dream, Portlyn smiles.

"Then," Sonny says; she tries to sound collected, like she's considering. "I guess." The toe of her shoe is boring into the concrete below, her foot twisting at the ankle. She can feel her teeth exposing themselves too much in a goofy smile – so much she probably looks like an idiot. Sonny can't help it; she smiles wider. "I mean, _okay._ Since you kind of issued me a challenge and all."

Portlyn looks taken aback, but only for a moment. She purses her mouth like she's holding something caged behind her lips before making a move toward Sonny and the rest happens like a drowsy, flickering dream. By the end of it, Portlyn's number is in Sonny's cell phone, which is folded tightly into her sweating palm like something precious. And Portlyn's walking away, but she's not walking away like before. Not really. But the body can be dumb, and Sonny feels like that hypnotic fire inside of her has just been doused out, allowing her to drift awake. She wonders then, what exactly just happened.

*

"Ooh, look at you, all dolled up."

Sonny shoots a weak smile over her shoulder and hopes her mom thinks it's a sufficient response before dropping her hands to her knees, hunching self-consciously before the full-length mirror propped against her photograph-filled wall. Her hair is a bit more curled than usual, and Sonny isn't sure, but she thinks it might make her look like a less intimidating version of Medusa.

"Is it too much? What do you think?" Sonny bursts out as she senses Mom coming closer. She twirls on her heels, attempting a grin and feels her lips slacken lamely. "What about accessories? Blue brooch or magenta brooch?" With that, Sonny grabs two dark, taffeta rosettes from the nightstand beside her and holds them up to her lapel in turn, watching for the subtle changes stirring Mom's expression. "Maybe no brooch, or - "

"How about you calm down and stop saying the word brooch? What is this? When you said you were going out, you didn't tell me it was a date."

"Lets not broach that topic," Sonny says, spitting laughter and leaning to pat Mom awkwardly on the shoulder.

Mom raises a thin eyebrow – her special _I'm-onto-you eyebrow_ - letting Sonny know the subject hasn't been dropped, and Sonny turns once more to let her eyes dart along her very purple form in the mirror.

"What?" Sonny snorts innocently. "Different variations count as the same word now?"

Sonny's eyes focus on the swell of her own lips where a loose strand of hair glues itself like a fly to a sticky insect trap. Maybe she's wearing too much lipgloss. She glances up for tissue and sees Mom still looking.

_Staring._

Sonny looks away and places one of her rosettes back onto the nightstand, letting her fingers work clumsily to unfasten the other in her hand, but Mom still won't relent, not when it comes to silent probing and those looks that are all eyebrows.

"Look," Sonny finally breathes, more to the rosette than her mother. "It's really cool that you're so supportive of me and all, but just because I make friends with a girl from work doesn't make it a date."

"Alright," Mom says easily, the word sounding like two hands going up in surrender. "No more. I won't mention it again. "

"Good."

Alleviatingly good, actually. Because it's not like Sonny hasn't been wondering - okay, _agonizing over_ - what Portlyn means by tonight and what she meant by her insistence.

Once Sonny had gotten into the lobby of her apartment building that afternoon, impatiently pushing the lighted button to summon the elevator, she had thought about calling Lucy for an all-out squeefest, only Sonny wasn't sure what she could have possibly said about her and Portlyn at this point. The fact is, Sonny's totally gone for someone she hardly knows, and any good reason for it, if it exists, completely escapes her understanding.

Sonny isn't _like_ this. She doesn't have gossipy, front-page affairs with cast members from other shows. Not that that's what's _happening_, but when Sonny thinks about this _whatever-it-is_ (this charge) between her and Portlyn, she imagines it leading there (sometimes) because Portlyn somehow burrowed her way into even the tiniest creases of Sonny's mind, and with nothing more than a few heavily-loaded looks, Sonny's brainpower cheapens down to a singleminded registry of _neckeyeslipslegs_. It drives Sonny insane, in a way that holds a knife to the throat of what Tawni had once described as her wholesomeness.

The _last_ thing she needs is to discuss any of this with her mother, no matter how cool she is.

"So...is she pretty?"

Sonny cries out then. It isn't in protest, though. The sharp end of the needle pricks her thumb, drawing out a bead of blood like a tiny, red pupil.

"Aw, babygirl," Mom coos, rushing forward.

Sonny sticks her thumb into her mouth up to the knuckle before she can reach her, but that doesn't stop Mom from hovering.

"It's okay, Mom." Sonny tastes the blood, grins around her throbbing finger, and hopes she doesn't resemble an infant too much or Mom will never leave her alone. "I just won't be playing any Thumb War tonight."

It takes a few promises, a bit more probing, and a purple glow-in-the-dark band-aid for Mom to leave Sonny's room, and when she does, Sonny's thoughts are like the monsters under the bed - pouncing once the adults leave -and Sonny has to pore over the detail in her outfit to keep them bridled, as if they're a mess of unruly, helium-filled balloon animals.

*

When Portlyn comes to the door, she does two things that Sonny doesn't expect. The first one is coming to the door.

Portlyn stands in the stale hallway, decorated in sparkly silver and white. Her eyes are dusky and distant, outlined in a hard, black way Portlyn has never worn to the set. She looks good and bright enough to light up the entire building, maybe even the city. It makes Sonny feel underdressed – or just inadequate – like she should tell Portlyn she wasn't expecting her at the door so soon and flee back toward her room to change into a sequined top, maybe lose the jacket.

She doesn't; Sonny smiles instead, and Portlyn takes it as an invitation.

"Kitschy," Portlyn comments as she looks around, and letting the words out toward nowhere in particular so they can roam the walls, she side-steps Sonny and makes her way into the apartment like she could belong nowhere else, circling the living room slowly with her hands clutching each other behind her back. Halfway around the coffee table, Portlyn walks toward Sonny and stops before her, peering down at the rosette pinned to her lapel before she lightly flicks the material with one ring-circled finger. "Nice brooch."

Sonny shouts a "Thanks!" before Portlyn's words even clear the air, though when the first thing Portlyn actually said registers, Sonny frowns. "Wait a minute..."

She's going to contend against it, tell Portlyn that her mom still works long hours on principal and doesn't have time to worry about redecorating, and anyway, neither of them have the heart to replace the things they brought from Wisconsin, but then the picture before her actually registers, and it's all washed from her mind. Portlyn stands there in Sonny's living room looking brilliant and alone, her arms around her back. Alone. Looking wonderful. Without company.

Perhaps Sonny had pored over that gossipy magazine Tawni had thrown at her too much, because the thing is, Sonny realizes she had expected Portlyn to show up with an entourage of girls with names like Nikki and Italy.

She realizes she's staring then and sucks in a breath; Portlyn stands still. Sonny doesn't know what it means - her coming alone - but the reality seems to fuel a few date-night related thoughts, so in an uncertain moment, Sonny decides to tentatively say what's on her mind. What's actually been on her mind for weeks.

"You look -"

Portlyn cuts her off quick. Her voice sounds of burnt, bitter sugar, like the topping from the frozen crème brûlée she and her mom sometimes buy at the supermarket and then always leave too long under the broiler.

"So whenever you want to get going," Portlyn starts. "My driver's waiting."

"Er." The half-word melts from Sonny's mouth slowly, and she moves to grab her patchwork purse off the arm of the couch to hide the wave of sudden embarrassment rising from within her. "Alright."

Sonny shouts a quick goodbye to her mom, who promised she would be in the bath until Sonny left, and then frowns all the way to the door.


	4. Everybody

**Notes:** I must admit, writing this chapter made me want to throw myself from a window (a very tall one that opens vertically on hinges, located on the first floor). For whatever reason, nothing came out right, and I found myself asking why I bothered with writing _at all_ about a kajillion times. (In a very dramatic screaming-to-the-gods sort of way. Must have been funny to watch.) On the plus side (or not), I somehow ended up writing half of a Zora/Sonny oneshot that's set about eight years in the future. (I don't know if I'll finish, but am so. very. sorry. in advance.)

I've also decided to make this a new chapter since it turned out longer than I had expected. Bleh.

* * *

**Chapter 3:**

**Everybody**

"Hi, I'm Sonny!"

A reciprocating grunt comes from the big, boulder of a man behind the wheel.

"Hm," Sonny comments, crouched and bent over the front seat. The very dark and pretentious-looking SUV leaves them all shrouded in darkness, and Sonny feels at bit like she's about to steal away into the night. "Well, okay-"

"I'd sit back," Portlyn says from beside her.

"Huh?"

Sonny understands what Portlyn means in a second: the car starts moving, slow at first and then with purpose, and Sonny ends up on the floor and then making a mad scramble for her safety belt.

Sonny's the only one with words raining from her mouth after that. In fact, once Sonny's safely buckled and the car is on the road, the words are _pouring_ out. They're halfway to wherever they're going when Portlyn cuts off Sonny's unbridled slew of awkward and irrelevant observations to ask Sonny if she minds if she has a smoke, her fingers absently tweaking a knob near the cup holder between them. It pops from the dividing console a second later, uninvited and glowing red like an alert. She can already feel the second thoughts creeping up on her then.

Vaguely, Sonny lets herself lump that uncertainty with the slow-passing lights and soft sounds of Friday night traffic that swoop past, flying just out of reach like a mockingbird sweeping the moments clean with the feathery fringe of his wings. She still wants this.

When the SUV pulls up to a curb and comes to a stop about fifteen minutes later, Sonny squints out past Portlyn to realize she's looking out at different type of traffic, the bustling pieces walking upright and conscious. Judgment-making. Thought-forming. (Or thought-forming _in some cases_, Sonny would joke if she were saying it out loud.) The crowd outside stands bedazzling and high-heeled, congregating over L.A.'s cracked, concrete palm. There's a sign up above that throws down a blazing rain of pinkish light, and when Sonny traces it upwards to get an idea of what kind of joint she's about to walk into, she realizes she's been here once before.

With Tawni.

Two months ago, Tawni had suggested she and Sonny check out a nightclub which had been generating a lot of buzz, leaving Sonny wary and undecided until the words 'bonding experience' spoken from Tawni's lips made Sonny's heart sing and her inhibitions boil away like hot wax. Suddenly Sonny had been applying her special nighttime lipstick while standing ankle-deep in clothes that weren't quite right for the night.

They had shown up in a cab to this exact spot just after dusk and ended up on the sidewalk way past nightfall, inhaling exhaust from passing cars and laughter that didn't belong to either of them, unable to convince the bouncer to let them through the doors. Sonny hadn't thought the experience so bad – what was better for bonding than shared rejection and mutual follow-up feelings of indignation? - but as it turned out, Tawni was crushed, and so Sonny had sworn then that she was done with bustling, long-lined places like this.

"Are you sure we can get in here?" Sonny asks, here and now.

Portlyn is peering through the tinted window, fingertips pressed at the glass just above the sill, eyes doing a confident sort of dance over the crowd. It's huge and planetary, no-one seeming to mind the exhaust.

"I get in anywhere I want."

"Yeah, you," Sonny continues; she knows it's true. "But what about _me_? You're not gonna leave me out on the sidewalk, are you?" Sonny jokes breathily, because it's what she does. Joke. Portlyn turns to her and quirks an eyebrow, the corner of her lip moving up in an amused way that makes Sonny think that just might be what Portlyn's planning. "So..."

"So I'm in, you're in," Portlyn says with a little lilt. "C'mon."

Sonny slides across the leather right after Portlyn, who smirks out toward the huge, lighted sign as soon as she's out of the SUV like she knows all of its secrets. (It says _Afterlife_, and Sonny's mind can't help but snicker out some lame line about how the girl she's arriving with is how Sonny knows she didn't go to The Bad Place.) Sonny's clunky heels clack over the the pavement when she stands, and without looking away from the front of the building, Portlyn slips her arm through Sonny's – quick and simple – and the world just. _Melts_. It melts, and the lights go swirling, flying by like they're onboard a tilt-a-whirl. Sonny has called L.A. her home for about a year now, but for the first time, she feels like she's actually living in the movies.

With a lazy motion, Portlyn gestures with a bangled wrist to the trail of people lined against the outside wall, leans into Sonny, and says, "Wouldn't want you to get left out on the sidewalk."

Everyone has seen pictures of the socialites in magazines, arms always linked like they've been stitched together - always a pair. Of course. A completely platonic pair. It doesn't bother her, though. Not now.

As if Sonny's thoughts of magazine pictures had been misinterpreted by some deity as a plea, a crowd of men with clicking, flashing cameras all but pounce, on them as soon as they take their first steps. They're like mothers hungry to catch any normal thing their new babies might wobblingly produce, only there is no real tenderness behind those lenses. As they approach, Sonny makes a point to wave, warm and cheerily as ever. The attention has a sort of contagious, electric feel that's got her all wrapped with excitement.

Portlyn has a different idea, acting like the paparazzi might be nothing more than vaguely-annoying palm trees with a few loose leaves. She's pulling Sonny closer and picking up her pace, heading in a crisp line to the front of the gawking crowd and through all the too-personal, beggar-like pleas for her attention, but for all her apparent disregard for their flashing lights, she still sashays her hips and tilts her chin upward, glowing with satisfaction the entire way.

Suddenly the shutter-eyed crowd dissipates, held back by what looks like nightclub security, and Sonny and Portlyn reach two double doors wide open. Portlyn makes eyes at the bouncer standing up front, who nods as if Portlyn owns the place, and suddenly she and Sonny are slipping into a space that's all flittering lights and music that seems to consist mostly of booming palpitations.

And people. Everywhere.

"I feel like I've just come inside from being trapped in a tornado," Sonny shouts over the music. She thinks she might have just strolled into the hurricane, though.

Portlyn gives a little dry laugh. "_Right_," she says, almost agreeably. Sonny starts to think Portlyn comes alive at night with the city, her telling moments happening in starry air and low light. "Then it's a tornado that has a million eyes."

Sonny takes the moment to slip away from Portlyn's arm, slowing slightly so it might be easier to get through the dancing crowd if she walks behind. Portlyn notices straight off, looks back, and focuses a face sculpted in surprise on her own skinny elbow, which is still held like she's linking arms with a ghost. On her, the confusion looks like a confession, making her appear perfectly lost, if only for a second.

The next she's languidly lifting a shoulder in a shrug, gazing back with the hooded, indifferent eyes of a centerfold before she lets her arm unfold easily at her side. Sonny wishes she hadn't been such an idiot and pulled away.

"So," Sonny yells as filler, knowing something else is bound to race toward her tongue once it loosens with that one word. "This 'I'm in you're in thing.' Does the same apply if I say...maybe want lobster in the caf again? Everybody's missing out. Brenda's a _really_ good gourmet chef."

"Did before," Portlyn shrugs, parting the crowds before her to slip through like the sweat off of a chilled bottle of pop.

Sonny takes the glares and rude mutters and apologizes from where she trails behind.

Once they surface, it's before a long bar giving off pastel lighting all along the underside of the counter ledge. Portlyn leans forward against the lip and bends at the waist to beckon the bartender.

When Sonny looks up, left side pressed into the bar, Portlyn is looking her over, brows furrowed.

"It's too bad Chad decided you're banned from our table," she says musingly.

Sonny really shouldn't be surprised, but-

"Wait, _what_?" Sonny asks, voice edged in indignation. Portlyn's expression doesn't change. "He banned me from a _table_? In a...well, sorta-public place? I can see a set, but... Oh, he is _unbelievable_."

"I wouldn't get so fired-up," Portlyn seems to gloat, leaning her hip against the bar and waving a finger in front of Sonny. "I _know_ Chad, and he's so transparent. It's like a compliment with him sometimes. He finds you interesting, infuriatingly adorable even."

She's looking at Sonny now like she expects her to come alight with interest, perhaps beg to know more about the psychology of the man which is Chad Dylan Cooper.

"He uh..." Sonny starts, not exactly sure she wants to register any of it at all. So she does what comes naturally: she runs off at the mouth enough to drown out any other possible function. "It's just unfair and sort of dictatorial. I mean, he really shouldn't decide everything that goes on with your show with this iron fist of his. I mean, just because he's the one pouting on the poster doesn't mean anything. Honestly, I really didn't know what to make of your show at first, but after I payed attention, I totally started noticing your character a lot more than Chad's."

_Great._

Sonny turns into the bar, leaning forward to look down at the grain. From the corner of her eye, she sees the bartender wander back over and Portlyn accepting two tall, honey-colored glasses. Then, as if in response, Portlyn slides one carefully into Sonny's nervous hands like the offering is somehow sympathetic, her fingertips lingering over the slick surface. The color of the liquid bending behind the glass is like morning, mingling prettily with the flickering lights shooting through the nightclub in oblongs.

"Ooh, pretty," Sonny observes, holding the glass up to the light as if in salute. Then, she pitches her voice higher: "What is it?"

Portlyn takes that moment to bring her own glass to her mouth, grinning a bit around the rim, and Sonny is automatically doing the same as if hypnotized, lifting the curve of the glass to her lips and tipping her head back to drink and quell the somewhat parched feeling inside her.

It _stings._ Stings like a hard deliberation, like someone driving a million tiny pins in her tongue and lips and throat, so it's unsurprising that the floor ends up showered with liquid, poured straight from Sonny's sick lips.

"Mostly rum," Portlyn replies belatedly before hoisting her glass back expertly.

Sonny gasps, heaving her weight against the bar and pressing her hand to her chest while slamming the glass onto the countertop before pushing it somewhere far away. She knows Portlyn is a year older than she is, but she's still sure that doesn't make her twenty-one, and maybe she's still somewhat naïve about the goings-on in Hollywood (and admittedly, perhaps outside of Hollywood also), but she'd just thought-

She just hadn't been expecting that.

"_What kind of place is this_?" Sonny sputters. A quick, cuspate gasp like heavy machinary. "Portlyn, I don't know if you maybe got the wrong idea, but I - _are you trying to kill me_? Death by pinkish-gold drink, is that what this is? I can't drink that!"

Suddenly it all really gets to her, deep down in her bones, the way Portlyn looks so indifferent, watching Sonny through the music with smokey, sober eyes. But before anything can be said, a tanned, shadowy-looking girl from _Mackenzie Falls_ Sonny has never heard speak saunters over with two guys, their model-like stances straight from an _Abercrombie and Fitch_ ad. Sonny isn't exactly sure which season – or week – of _Mackenzie Falls_ they're from since the cast of their show seems rotate with the lunar cycle, but she recognizes one of them all the same.

They're the last people Sonny wants to see.

Frankly, she'd rather shimmy her way into a very dark and lonely hole for the rest of the night.

They greet Portlyn with three simultaneously-rising chins, as cozy with each other as _Mackenzie Falls_ ever seems to really get. The taller of the two guys immediately introduces himself to Sonny as Carter, the other as Devon, who Sonny notes has bright blonde streaks in his dark hair that remind her of peanut butter and jelly. They point lastly to the girl beside them, indicating that her name is Loraine. When Sonny half-heartedly grins her way, she sneers.

"_Okay then_..." Sonny murmurs, straining backwards for her glass before remembering that sting. Instantly she wishes Tawni, Nico, or Grady would come around and crack a joke, because it's then that Sonny realizes that when Portlyn had mentioned everybody being here earlier, she had meant _her_ everybody.

God, she hopes Chad won't show his pinched little face.

"_Alright_," Carter hisses, straightening out his collar after Portlyn idly gestures toward Sonny with her drink-heavy hand, reciting Sonny's name like it's a line. "I've seen your show." (Devon and Loraine take a moment to look scandalized, hands like giant spiders over their hearts.) "You know, you're pretty hot when you play that talk show host."

Sonny knows the sketch. She plays a busty blonde with a beehive hairdo and shoulder pads that put 2x4s to shame. Carter takes a moment to emphasizes her thoughts by cupping two hands in front of his chest and nodding appreciatively, and Sonny crosses her arms and seriously considers telling Marshall the sketch is rubbish and should be scrapped first thing Monday. Her insides feel cold, and she ends up a step away from him, which is a step closer to Portlyn.

"Nuh-uh, Carter," Portlyn says playfully as if she understood the stepping as a cue. She shifts her elbow up onto the bar so it barely brushes Sonny's arm, more like a reminder of a touch than the actual thing. "Sonny here's not interested."

Carter squints, eyeing Portlyn as he pulls on his bottom lip with a glossy fingernail. His gaze darts toward Sonny, and she provides him with an apologetic smile. His dark hair is styled exactly like Chad's.

"You guys are..." he starts, and Portlyn picks it up right off. The accusation is dead before it has a chance to rise from the ground.

"_Friends_." Portlyn sounds exasperated, and something inside of Sonny drops a few degrees. Sidelong, Sonny can see Portlyn peer her way, and at the moment, Sonny half thinks the intensity fueling that glance has something to do with the music coming to a halt.

"Yeah," Sonny starts, dragging at first and then gaining momentum. "We're friends. Like...bosom buddies! Amigos – amigas? I never did do well in Spanish." She ends it in a laugh.

"Well," Carter says. He's still squinting down at her. "It's too bad you're not then. Interested," he clarifies when Sonny raises an eyebrow, though he looks at Portlyn when he says, "She's a funny one."

Portlyn reaches over, curiously repositioning a strand of Sonny's hair and smoothing it out. Sonny feels that touch travel down her spine like an echo and stiffens, motion chased out of her with Portlyn's shuffling fingers.

Portlyn stills her hand. "Best sketch comedian they have on _So Random_."

Sonny can feel her mouth being pulled wide open in suspicion.

On Sonny's first day of kindergarten, she had made friends with a girl who said she liked Sonny's impressions of Jim Carrey. They sat together at a table with paste and scissors and pieces of thick, colored paper in varying sizes and learned to cut circles into shapes of snowmen with dull pairs of plastic scissors.

The next day, Sonny arrived late to class, and the seat near her friend was already taken by someone pretty and spotted with too many freckles. During snack time, when Sonny went to show her friend her Robin Williams, she leaned into Sonny and whispered that she couldn't be Sonny's friend anymore. Then the freckled girl told Sonny that the girl who Sonny thought was her friend had said her Jim Carrey impressions were actually very stupid.

Sonny doesn't remember either of their names, but she remembers not being prepared for the hurt or the feeling like she was withering inside.

That's strangely how Sonny feels now, as she realizes that tonight is starting to make her feel like she's a few steps away from her life becoming a socially cyclic nightmare. Coming to California was starting school all over again, and now she's due for another big letdown.

She shoots Portlyn an incredulous look as a voice introducing the band about to play booms in hollow resonance throughout the room, and Portlyn shifts her eyes and her body away. Sonny wants to know if Portlyn is playing games with her or if Portlyn thinks they're both playing a game with with her cast members, because it wasn't even six hours ago that Portlyn said she doesn't watch _So Random._

"Follow me," Portlyn urges, letting Sonny's looks slide off her. (Like water off of oiled feathers.) She's speaking to Sonny, but she doesn't take her eyes from the direction of the small stage. "I can get you the best spot in the house."


	5. Handshake

**Notes:** Aaaand finally things start to look up! (First half of this is kind of angsty, though.) Usually chapters take me forever to post simply because I'm so busy angsting over writing them. I tried not to be so hard on myself over this one, and as it turned out, I actually enjoyed writing it. (Gasp! Unheard of!) Part of my enthusiasm might have been that I couldn't stand leaving Sonny unhappy in the last chapter, though. :P Yeah, my author's notes scarcely have anything to do with the actual content of the chapters. I just thought I would needlessly take up space.

* * *

**Chapter 4:**

**Handshake**

The band is called Cherry Bomb, and frankly, Sonny's heard better coming from the trash collector who thrashes around outside her building on Monday mornings. It's possible, though, that maybe that's the bitterness of rejection talking, seeping in through her ears and letting her appreciation for music pour out through the sour hole in her stomach.

In the loud space, Sonny defeatedly plops into a chair at a small round table in a quieter part of of the bar and flings her purse onto the surface like it's nothing more than trash. She considers calling for a cab, but when her eyes slide to her wrist, the face of her watch smiles out 10:10, its little second-hand tongue hanging out in ridicule. Of course, Mom would be waiting up, and Sonny doesn't want to explain the cab or her mood and possibly the need for fifty bucks.

Lights flash, the band plays like two colliding trains ramming through Sonny's ears. She looks through the crowd and right away finds Portlyn. Watching her is kind of like watching stars in the sky, they're so far away, twinkling and rotating and doing other star-things that are all part of a night's work as they effortlessly draw you out to places you'd never think of going just to get a glimpse of their shine.

The rest of the _Mackenzie Falls_ cast is not far from Portlyn, and Sonny sees them orbiting around each other, trying to get their heads close together and it doesn't take long before Sonny realizes she's witnessing a far-away demonstration of frenzied whispering, only without the whooshing, secretive sounds.

And honestly, after being traumatized by Portlyn's surprise rum attack, Sonny feels like she can only hope that a thugged-out master of more blatant illegalities hasn't arrived to provide them all with a pillowcase full of drugs like sweet and sticky Halloween candy.

Sonny should have figured, really, when it turns out that it's worse.

Portlyn and Loraine and Devon and Carter all walk back to the table like they're on display, and when Sonny raises an eyebrow as she slumps back and crosses her arms, Carter informs her of the joyous occasion:

"Chad just texted. He'll be in in a sec."

*

The cast raises their newly-acquired drinks to Chad Dylan Cooper as soon as he looms from a distance, and all their arms must look like they make up some giant overturned insect with liquid glass feet balanced on skinny legs sticking straight up into the air.

Chad's grinning his expensive, bleached-white smile and thrusting congratulatory fingers toward the fawning faces around the table. Sonny wants to puke condolences to the crowd who genuinely seems to lap up his _Congratulations, congratulations! You're in the presence of Chad Dylan Cooper _grin.

Sonny sees the moment Chad's pupils fall over her. It's hard to miss, since his eyes look like the pressure built up from the surprise of catching a glimpse of her on 'his' turf, sans _his_ invite, almost has his eyeballs shooting out from his stupid squinty sockets to plop right into her denim lap.

"Well well well," he says, pulling at his leather racer jacket and slipping casually into the seat next to her. Sonny senses the rest of the cast drawing back into themselves like closing umbrellas as he slips all the way to the right corner of his chair so his left arm drapes along the back like a snake. "I see _someone_ let the Z-list celebrities in here tonight."

Chad's tone is accusatory, but he doesn't even look to a specific person for placement. Sonny wonders if they're all the same to him - if Portlyn and Loraine and Devon and Carter are just figures that register in his brain as Not Chads.

Sonny sneers his way and uses her toes to push her entire chair away from him.

"I think the bigger question, _Chad_, is if you had to use an entrance for special cases," Sonny says sweetly as she feigns interest in even her own question, letting her chin drop into her palm, elbow balancing over the tabletop. "You know, to accommodate actors whose everyday functions need to revolve around accommodating their _enormous heads."_

Chad Dylan Cooper's a tool; his jacket is reflecting the streams of lights, and his eyes are shut against the room like he can't be bothered, lips tucked up into a secret, smug grin. Sonny glares.

"Seriously, Munroe," he says, putting his hands through his hair. "What're you doing in _my_ hangout with _my_ cast, and whose brain did you have to numb with your incessant chattering in order to hijack the social ladder you needed to climb to get in here? "

Like a forced confession spoken straight from her bones, Sonny turns her head to where Portlyn sits, and like someone's strung a thread through her pupils and stuck the other ends to Portlyn, Sonny stays fixated as Loraine leans into Portlyn, lavishly unfurling a tanned arm and plucking a cigarette from Portlyn's fingers and then bringing it slowly to her own lips.

Loraine doesn't take her eyes off Portlyn, and that makes two of them, because Sonny can't look away either. Watching the two is like watching storm clouds butt up against each other in the sky until everything becomes overcharged and the gray just rips apart from all that tension in a blaze of lightning. Portlyn's smile screams intimacy, and Sonny thinks again about going home. Loraine raises Portlyn a twist of her full red lips, blows out a ring of smoke. Sonny thinks about going home.

Chad laughs. "Now that's rich."

"What's so funny?" Sonny shoots with one of her dirtiest looks. She knows that laugh, can just _feel_ that he's openly scoffing at her and bristles like a drenched cat.

Chad runs his fingers along his unbroken peach face, clearly enjoying her discomfort.

He leans forward, elbows steadied on his knees, his bright eyes beckoning her forward.

In a second of uncertainty, Sonny's eyes wander sidelong to Portlyn, who has her fingers around her own cigarette again as she watches her and Chad with interest.

Sonny quickly squints back toward Chad. "_Well_?"

"What?" he scoffs, leaning back in his seat. "Geez, I thought you residents of Chuckle City would understand that a guy needs a laugh every now and again."

His words hit her like they've become tangible in the open air, like Chad or Portlyn have just leaned over to slap her across the face, and just like that, Sonny finally _gets it._

_He finds you intriguing, infuriatingly adorable even._

The words resonate off her skull, sounding like an echo doing flip-flops from the walls of a cathedral, sounding like the noise a vase makes when you rub your finger around the rim to find out if it's real crystal.

(It's not crystal. It's ordinary glass.)

The whole thing – _everything _- was nothing but some sneaky, disgusting, _should-have-been-totally-transparent_ _Mackenzie Falls ploy _to get her out with Chad Dylan Cooper. So the cast of 'The Falls' could laugh at her. Sonny feels so stupid, not just for falling for it, but for falling for it _again. _This is far from the first time she's been taken in by the cast of _Mackenzie Falls. _

"Oh my gosh," Sonny says, standing so fast the backs of her calves bump the chair. "You-" She's looking down at Chad's smug face before she realizes it's more appropriate to be looking toward Portlyn, who has her lips parted in confusion. Loraine, who is smirking at her side, flicks a short string of ash into Carter's coke. "You! You guys set me up!"

"_Pardon_?" Portlyn asks, leaning forward over the table. Her elbow knocks against a pink-filled glass.

"Don't you _pardon_ me, you – you - _oh__, _you exactly-who-I-thought-you-were, you!" Sonny huffs.

Chad stands, looking befuddled and smug and amused all at once, but that's peripheral to Portlyn, who has her hand gingerly placed over her chest and the nerve to have a look on her face that actually seems a little hurt behind the confused sarcasm.

Sonny turns her back to both of them like a finalized _goodbye_ and walks hurriedly for the entrance.

In her ears are hacked pieces of shouted confusion that drift from the table, riding over the waves of Portlyn's echoic voice crashing to the insides of her skull like the ocean. _So maybe I need a laugh_, she'd said.

Most of all, Sonny realizes Portlyn had said _maybe._

Sonny should have _known –_ the only thing that anybody from _Mackenzie Falls_ ever finds worthy of laughter are other people. Sonny feels like her earlier thoughts - of_ romance_ of all things - are burning holes in her and blinding her to where she's treading.

The warm outside air wraps Sonny up tight, only it's when she comes to encounter a brick wall sprayed ugly with a blanket of yellow lamplight that she realizes she's gone out the wrong door. This place looks to be the side or back of the nightclub and a dead end at that, and if that wasn't bad enough, there's a couple to her far left sucking at each other's faces.

This won't lead her anywhere, only the walk back through the club and to the actual exit flashes like a black hole in her mind, complete with transverse images of Chad and Loraine and Portlyn all being poured glasses of amber-colored alcohol while they laugh it up at Sonny's expense. Their lilting faces only dissipate when the latter of the three appears before Sonny in real time, effectively barring the way back into the flashy nightclub.

"So I'm it, huh?" The words are out of Sonny's mouth before she even thinks of them. "I'm the big – the big punch-line of your bored, _Mackenzie _Falls existence?"

"What?" Portlyn poises herself a little warily, as if she expects Sonny to pounce. She crosses her arms uncomfortably and juts a thumb over her shoulder, opening her mouth to either continue with the bald-faced denial or explain just why Sonny had been such an easy target. It doesn't matter much to Sonny which. She barrels on.

"You know, I actually thought - no,_ believed_ - that you were going to turn out to be different somehow, but setting me up with _Chad _when here I was actually thinking –" And all of a sudden, Sonny can't even say it.

"You know you're talking like a crazy person, right?" Portlyn asks, releasing the words warily but still full of attitude.

"Oh, right," Sonny spits, shifting uncomfortably. "Because I'm clearly the one with the crazy reasoning."

"Well, yeah," Portlyn says, like that was obvious. "Why would I set you up with Chad?"

Sonny laughs without any mirth and maybe a bit maniacally because Portlyn appears as if she wants to step away from Sonny. She doesn't move.

"Come on. The thing about me being 'intriguing,'" she says with air quotes, "and then him just showing up while you share friendship smokes with Loraine?" Sonny makes a frenzied gesture with her hands that's a cross between an electrical plug being being pushed into a power outlet and an out of control water hose - an unfortunate and possibly deadly combination - possibly to distract from what she had just said. Sonny hadn't meant to mention Loraine.

"So?"

"So!" Sonny repeats, but it dies there and drops from existence. Portlyn's looking at her like she's both hopelessly perplexed and vaguely irritated, and Sonny's reasoning suddenly seems weak when she's staring straight into that.

There's a moment where they just stand in mutual evaluation of each other, and Portlyn draws her lips into her mouth, pushing her arms tighter around herself like a blanket even though she couldn't possibly be cold.

"Look," Portlyn says seriously. "Chad's doing this thing where he color-coordinates his dates with the day of the week. Fridays are blondes." As Sonny tries to wrap her head around that bizarre tidbit, Portlyn continues. "He would never let me set him up anyway. I believe you were there when he told me I shouldn't speak if I didn't have my words scripted."

Sonny does remember. Back then she had even thought it was funny.

Here and now, though, with the yellow light from the streetlamps drenching her and turning her silver blouse to plated gold, Portlyn does looks genuine - like she might mean it. She looks genuine even with the way her mouth is like a stiff strip of metal that's shielding something.

She looks genuine.

Or at least she does until Sonny remembers that Portlyn's an award-winning actress.

"Just." Sonny starts, already feeling defeated. She drops her arms to her sides. "_Look, _Chad or no Chad, I really thought I wanted to come out here with you tonight, but right now? I'm not having any fun at all, and if you just brought me along because I'm the sort of joke you like to laugh at, then -"

"You're not." Portlyn says it so abruptly and with such a clean face that Sonny feels hugely disinclined to believe her. Only more than anything, she wants to.

The silence stares them down.

"Portlyn, are you testing me?"

Portlyn says nothing.

Sonny brings up a hand, ticking off an invisible point on her index finger. "Because first you insult me," she affirms, finding that once she gets started, it's hard to stop. She flicks up her thumb next. "And after that, you ignore me. Oh, and we can't forget the time you decided you were going to poison me with a deceitfully innocent-looking drink. You know, an hour or so ago?"

"That's not how it was."

"Oh?" Sonny questions sarcastically, folding her arms carefully before her. "Then how was it?"

"You seemed nervous," Portlyn says, undaunted and as if her answer should have been obvious.

"I'm _underaged!_" Sonny explains, because that_ is_ obvious.

"Look, I know the club owner," Portlyn replies flippantly, relaxing a bit into the atmosphere and waving a hand. "He doesn't care, because as long as he gets the exposure -"

"I do," Sonny says. The yellow lights slice through her skull; god, she has a headache. "I care, okay? Before I even came out to California, I cared, and I promised myself, and I promised my mom that I wouldn't _become _a certain way, and just. Never mind. I'm_ not_ like that, okay?"

There's an electric quality to the air, and Sonny sees Portlyn run her thumbnail along the inside of her elbow as her eyelids drop, slow, like stage curtains.

And like Sonny's Ali Baba speaking _open sesame,_ Portlyn slips from the doorway and steps along the outside of the building, stopping a few paces from the doorframe to lean her back against the brick. There is the slightest scratching noise when she lifts her shoulders to her ears very dilatorily in a shrug – Sonny thinks it might be apologetic this time.

"Look," Portlyn says softly. "I'm kinda buzzed right now."

"Great," Sonny answers. As if Portlyn thinks that excuses everything. Sonny takes that as her cue to split and strides decisively toward the door.

"Wait," Portlyn calls as Sonny reaches the doorway. "I need to ask you something."

Sonny doesn't know why she stops; she should know better. Being lassoed in by Portlyn's words and her eyes and the way she walks and the enigma she is was exactly what got Sonny here in the first place. Portlyn inhales deeply, her shoulders and chest rising like homemade bread dough in a warm plate before she expels a very long breath. It's like Portlyn believes that if she keeps exhaling she won't have to continue with what she was going to say, no matter how much she'll deflate trying to put it off.

"Well?" Sonny demands remorselessly, chin high.

Portlyn turns so her bare shoulder kisses the wall, and Sonny watches the way Portlyn's blouse drapes in the middle and the way her fingertips extending across her stomach from the arm that isn't pressed into the building curl at the craggy spots of brick and wishes she didn't still find Portlyn so mind-blowing. It can't be healthy. If Sonny were a super hero and Portlyn were her arch nemesis, Portlyn would probably defeat her every time.

"Aren't you going to talk to me?" Portlyn asks, possibly louder and more bothered than she had meant it to emerge. Only Sonny's confused, because if Portlyn thinks Sonny hasn't been talking to her, she's either been wearing earplugs all night or her senses are even more selective than Chad's.

"Portlyn, I've been talking your head off all night," Sonny says, pinching the material of her blouse and tugging a bit at her collar. "Didn't you hear me? I'm like _blab blab blab blab blab_." She uses her hand to form a sort-of triangular puppet mouth, opening and closing the fingery jaw with each 'blab' and moving her own head exaggeratedly so she feels her hair swish around her throat and skull.

Portlyn rolls her eyes. "I mean like you talk to those other actors on your show. Like you're having a blast."

Those other actors?

"They're my _friends._"

Once Sonny says it, she realizes it comes out all wrong. And then she realizes what Portlyn's actually asking her.

Portlyn rolls back so her shoulder blades are plugged into the wall, and she pulls her silver lighter from a pocket, but she must have left her endless package of long white cigarettes inside the nightclub, because she doesn't make a move to grab anything else, just flicks the trigger with her thumbnail so it spits a yellow flame like a tiny tongue.

Sonny amends: "I mean, I barely know you."

Even as it's spoken, Sonny knows it's hardly the reason she's such a nervous wreck around Portlyn lately. It's never taken Sonny long to open up to someone. Portlyn is unconventionally daunting, though Sonny could never explain to her why, especially since Portlyn probably isn't even on the same wavelength over what their interactions _mean._ Suddenly she feels like something inside of her is being sucked dry. Because Sonny realizes that as of now, she could never really explain it to anybody.

Potlyn's hand comes up to the pink of her mouth, slowly, like she thinks there's a cigarette in her hand and she's about to take one of those long-drawn smoky breaths that are agonizing on Sonny's end. Agonizing for the smear of irresolution across that moment. Smoke like clouds forms in her lungs, and because Sonny can't see inside her, she can't tell yet if they're storm clouds or just the regular shapeless kind. Portlyn inhales, and the world stands still until release comes after a lissome snake made of nicotine.

This time Portlyn doesn't have a cigarette between her fingers, though, and so she just pinches her bottom lip and sort of tugs.

"Tell me why you came out with me," she finally says, and in that Sonny sees a white flash of the Portlyn who tightroped the wall outside the studio. Calm and resolute. Impalpably reaching.

It kind of unnerves Sonny that the only thing she can think to say is,_ Well, look at you. _Instead, she says, "I thought you issued me a challenge. Something about being misunderstood."

So far, though, Sonny thinks, nobody is proving anything.

"Look," Sonny sighs, the part of her which invented the Peace Picnic rising from somewhere behind her ribs. "This night isn't really going so smooth. Maybe we should just start over. Like, just forget about everything and start with a clean slate."

Her stomach is clenched tight as a clam as Portlyn looks her over, tilting her head curiously so her hair falls around her face. For a terrible moment, Sonny's afraid Portlyn's going to tell her 'no' and then sashay right past her and back inside the booming, buzz-worthy nightclub, but then Portlyn sucks a breath in through her lips and shrugs.

"Alright," she agrees easily.

Instantly, Sonny can breathe again, and propelled by sheer glee, she takes a step forward.

"But," Portlyn says sternly, halting Sonny's advance. "If you're going to offer to shake my hand and say, '_Nice to meet you, my name's Sonny Munroe. What's your name?'_ The deal's off."

Even before she finishes speaking, Sonny's yanking back the hand she began extending toward Portlyn, clutching it as if her fingers were about to grow bicuspids. She laughs nervously, wiping her hands slyly down her pants like it was what she had meant to do forever.

"I was just - " Sonny laughs carefully, straining through her mind for an explanation and subsequently being whisked off on a quick tangent: "Well, my given name's Allison, actually..."

But Portlyn's lips curl up at the edges, like paper that's burning, and Sonny understands. A joke.

*

"So people like, think you're funny and stuff, right?" Portlyn asks. She's slumped backwards into the wall, her upper back and arms flat against it while her hips jut slightly outward in a lazy angle and her feet brace her from sliding liquid-like onto the floor.

They'd never gone back into the nightclub. No one had come looking for them, the only invitation they'd received being from the inside music that beckoned them like fingers. And even though they had mostly stood in companionable silence and made strange small talk, Sonny wasn't tempted.

"I sure hope so. If not, I'm out of a job," Sonny says, speaking from the corner of her mouth like it's a secret. She's about a foot from Portlyn, leaning her shoulder and hip into the same wall and looking into the tufts of her own hair which is gathered between her fingertips like a bouquet . "Why?"

Portlyn shrugs and turns her head to the side so her ear is flat against the wall and she's looking straight at Sonny. She lets her eyelids fall until her lashes come darkly against her cheeks.

The air is warm; traffic sounds and thinly-stretched music and the desultory chiming of Portlyn's bangles when she bends her wrists make a cocktail that tastes like a dream on the tips of Sonny's earlobes. It's a taste Sonny would describe as quintessentially and exquisitely summer, only it's barely springtime here in California.

"What is it about all of that?"

Portlyn sounds almost like a kid asking her parents to repeat her favorite bedtime story, and Sonny feels warm with the thought, like the sun is in her tummy, and so she obliges.

"I like making people feel good."

Shut-eyed, Portlyn smiles. The sun inside Sonny's tummy explodes like a piñata, and she blushes.

"This was fun," Portlyn says forty minutes later, one hand braced over the elevator doorframe in Sonny's building. She's holding the doors open from the outside like Moses held up the red sea. Sonny stands on the inside of the elevator, amazed that Portlyn could think of tonight as anything but just _this close_ to turning into a disaster. "Monday," she continues, "You should come out to my gallery again."

Sonny wants to ask Portlyn why she hangs out by that painted dumpster when the set of The Falls is lush as a king's palace, but before she can say a thing, Portlyn takes her hand from the doorframe. The doors groan shut as Portlyn steps away, and Sonny takes in as much as she can before the walls swallow her like a hungry mouth. Like a clean slate.


End file.
